Having just finished Steve’s biography by Walter Issacson, after a couple of false starts, I now feel a great admiration for what he has accomplished.

 Under pressure from my son Oliver, I dumped my Toshiba laptop for a MacBook pro three years ago after a virus wiped my hard-drive the day before I left on a trip to Europe.

 I was forced to learn how to use it while stuck in a plane and it is fair to say that I have struggled to off-load nearly 20 years of Microsoft idiosyncrasies for the so-called “simpler” methods of the Mac. Things that would drive me mad were getting used to the short cut keys – Command P (print) or Command C (copy) that we had dropped with the click and point of the mouse - originally an Apple innovation. Remembering when to do a four- finger scroll or two finger scroll has taken persistence. Sorting out my folders in a Mac world is another story.

What I found out, when reading Steve’s biography was the background behind so many of these innovations. For instance, I had never thought about it, but a Mac does not have a fan. For my last two laptops, the incessant hum of the fan would upset my equilibrium – starting up and stopping for no apparent reason; not switching off at night so I would wake to find my computer overheated in the morning.

I learnt from Steve that Apple’s desire for continuous improvement had led them to make a computer that did not need a fan. He also did not believe in on/off switches because they ruined the integrity of the design. Think of the swiping movement of the iPhone and how revolutionary that is and how quickly we have mastered it. On top of this he really wanted every Apple product to be thinner and sleeker and to minimize the components beneath the surface. Recently, when I had to use a friend’s laptop, I was shocked to hear that fan whir up, to feel the plastic, the rough, clunky edges and hear the hollow tap-tap-tap of an inferior keyboard.

Of course the best thing for me is that I can carry it in my handbag, nestled in its black cloth sleeve.

I liked how Steve acknowledged his first real mentor, Mike Markkula – “Mike really took me under his wing…his values were much aligned with mine. He emphasized that you should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goals should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last.”[1] Markkula stressed three points:

Empathy – an intimate connection with the feelings of the customer. 

Focus – “we must eliminate all the unimportant opportunities”

Impute – “people form an opinion about a product based on the signals that it conveys”. A product, presented in a “slipshod manner” will be presented as slipshod. 

Steve became intimately and obsessively involved in all aspects of Apple’s core products and for a CEO to take such an active role in product development, marketing and packaging has marked him apart from so many senior executives. And yet Steve was prone to rant and swear, publically humiliate and dress-down his staff and yet surprisingly, he would burst into tears on many occasions. As a woman, I consider this an interesting management technique, for women are often criticized for being too emotional so I was quite taken aback to see Steve adopt this.

Reality distortion field

Whose term is this anyway? Apparently Steve was a master and could “bend situations to his very strong will”[2] Issacson argues “At the root of the reality distortion was Job’s belief that that rules didn’t apply to him”.[3] There are big and small examples of this through out the book, but the funniest I found is that he did not put a license plate on his car and that he would always park in the handicapped spaces!

Somehow, given all his personality shortcomings, he was able to build this amazing company, full of dedicated professionals. In the early years, he was a great believer of getting his team away for 2-day retreats to focus and refine their thinking.

 Other Stevisms[4] -

Don’t compromise

The journey is the reward – this is an exalted mission

It’s not done until it ships.

Customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them

To add to this complexity, as a young man, Steve had dabbled in Buddhism and spent nearly year in India. He had also developed curious eating habits that embraced vegetarianism with bouts of veganism, fasting or just eating one ingredient for extended lengths of time – carrot or apples for example. Again, I find it extraordinary that he was able to find the energy from his low-protein diet to sustain him and his creativity, through such a pressured daily routine. Perhaps his temper tantrums reflect an iron deficiency? Towards the end of his life, Steve appeared to completely loose his appetite and his personal chef would rustle up anything he indicated that he would like to eat. He would then eat a mouthful and reject the rest.

Read the book and watch his interviews on YouTube. There is a great series with Bill Gates filmed in 2007.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=astoa8_6Q64&feature=related

And the outstanding address that Steve made at Stanford where he tells three stories from his life – especially about connecting the dots…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

It’s also fun to look at those old Apple ads – think different.